Chapter 2
The heavy mahogany doors leading to the kitchen corridors remained firmly shut, muffling the chaotic sounds of the catering staff. In the dim, quiet hallway just outside the grand dining room, Nora Hayes leaned heavily against the flocked wallpaper. The twenty-five-year-old housemaid was breathtakingly beautiful, possessing delicate features and fair, rosy skin, but tonight, she looked entirely broken.
She wore a fitted black maid dress with a cinched waist, a short A-line skirt, a white apron, and a white ruffled maid headband. However, the pristine uniform was a ruin. Her dress was deeply creased, her apron was terribly rumpled, and her lace headband sat noticeably askew in her disheveled hair. Worse than her uniform was her face. Her expressive eyes were profoundly puffy and shadowed in deep purple, the undeniable result of prolonged, silent crying.
"Nora?" a small, hesitant voice echoed in the quiet corridor.
Nora wiped a trembling hand across her wet cheeks and forced a fragile smile. She looked down at six-year-old Leo Hartwell, who sat quietly in his custom wheelchair. The boy was dressed impeccably in a charcoal suit and a cream shirt, his fair skin pale in the dim light.
"I am right here, sweetie," Nora whispered, her American accent shaking slightly as she crouched down to his eye level.
"Are we really going out there?" Leo asked, his small fingers gripping the armrests of his wheelchair. "Celia said nobody wants me at the big dinner. She said I ruin the pictures."
Nora’s heart shattered into a thousand jagged pieces. For weeks, Celia had been relentlessly bullying the gentle maid into silence, using threats of physical violence and termination to keep Nora compliant. But worse was what Celia did to the boy. Whenever guests arrived, Celia would lock Leo in the dark kitchen pantry, telling Adrian the boy preferred the quiet. Today, the cruelty had broken Nora's restraint.
"Celia is wrong, Leo," Nora said, her voice gaining a desperate, fierce conviction. "Your father is out there. It is Christmas Eve. You belong at that table, right beside him."
"But she locked me in the pantry again," Leo murmured, his lower lip trembling. "It was cold. I don't want her to be mad."
"I won't let her hurt you," Nora promised, reaching out to gently adjust the collar of his cream shirt. "I am going to bring you out there. You are a Hartwell. You don't have to hide in the dark anymore."
"Are you going to get in trouble, Nora?" the little boy asked, his innocent, perceptive eyes scanning her rumpled apron and puffy face.
"It doesn't matter what happens to me," Nora replied, standing up and gripping the handles of his wheelchair with white-knuckled determination. "What matters is that your father knows you are here."
May you like
"Okay," Leo whispered, taking a deep breath. "I'm ready."
Nora pushed the wheelchair forward, the rubber wheels gliding silently over the polished hardwood floors. She approached the heavy mahogany doors of the dining hall, her chest heaving with terror. She knew the extreme danger of crossing Celia Arden, a woman whose family commanded a powerful syndicate of their own. But as she pushed the doors open, stepping into the blinding, warm golden light of the crystal chandeliers, Nora knew she could not turn back.
